Role of platelet-rich plasma in articular cartilage injury and disease
Two articles on PainSci cite Mascarenhas 2015: 1. The Complete Guide to Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome 2. Does Platelet-Rich Plasma Injection Work?
PainSci commentary on Mascarenhas 2015: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
The full text of this paper concludes:
Recent systematic reviews on the topic conclude that there is still a paucity of high-quality data providing sufficient evidence to support or disprove the clinical utility of PRP in symptomatic osteoarthritis of the knee. There is even less clinical evidence supporting its use in other joints or in the treatment of focal osteochondral defects despite the basic science evidence in favor of its use. In addition, not all basic science and clinical studies on PRP have concluded it has positive effects.
So garbage in, garbage out, no real conclusions possible: not enough good data even for the knee, even less for other joints. And there’s contradictory evidence.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
Clinical and laboratory research aimed at biological approaches to cartilage repair are currently in high demand due to the poor regenerative capacity of articular cartilage in the setting of a diseased articular environment. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) takes advantage of supraphysiological concentrations of platelets and their growth factors harbored in α-granules, which together attempt to return the diseased articular cartilage to a preinjury state. The local use of PRP directly at the site of cartilage injury is thought to stimulate a natural healing cascade and accelerate the formation of cartilage repair tissue. This article provides an overview of the basic science behind the use of PRP in the treatment of cartilage injury and disease. Both initial and current examples of the use of intra-articular PRP in clinical human studies are provided. These include the use of PRP either alone or as an augmentation device with various other procedures, including arthroscopic microfracture and cell-free resorbable polyglycolic acid-hyaluronan implantation. Finally, the authors describe some of the potential future roles of PRP in clinical settings based on recent literature. These include Achilles tendon rupture, chronic tendinosis, chronic rotator cuff tendinopathy or tearing, muscle injury, and meniscal repair.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
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